Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction.
She was described in The
Times Literary Supplement as
"the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed
young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation
of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home,
the United States.
Adichie
has written the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow
Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013),
the short story collection The Thing
Around Your Neck (2009), and
the book-length essay We Should
All Be Feminists (2014). Her
most recent books are Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen
Suggestions (2017), Zikora (2020)
and Notes on Grief (2021).
In 2008,
she was awarded a MacArthur
Genius Grant. She was the recipient of
the PEN Pinter Prize in 2018.
Adichie was born in the city of Enugu in Nigeria, the fifth of six
children in an Igbo family. She was raised in the university town of Nsukka in Enugu State.While
she was growing up, her father, James Nwoye Adichie (1932–2020), worked as a
professor of statistics at the University of Nigeria. Her mother, Grace Ifeoma (1942–2021), was the
university's first female registrar. They lived in a house on campus previously occupied by
famous author Chinua Achebe. The family lost almost everything during the Nigerian Civil War, including both her maternal and paternal grandfathers. Her
family's ancestral village is Abba in Anambra State
Adichie
completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria Secondary
School, Nsukka, where she received several academic prizes. She studied
medicine and pharmacy at the University of
Nigeria for a year and a half.
During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the
university's Catholic medical students.
At the
age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States to
study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She
transferred to Eastern
Connecticut State University (ECSU)
to be near her sister Uche, who had a medical practice in Coventry,
Connecticut. She received a bachelor's
degree from ECSU, summa cum laude, in 2001.
In 2003,
Adichie completed a master's degree in creative
writing at Johns Hopkins
University. Adichie was a Hodder
fellow at Princeton University during the 2005–2006 academic year.In 2008, she
received a Master of Arts degree in African
studies from Yale University.
Also in 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.[9] She
was awarded a 2011–2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Adichie
has been awarded sixteen honorary doctorate degrees from universities
including Yale University, the University of
Pennsylvania, the University of
Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown
University, Johns Hopkins
University, and the Catholic
University of Louvain, where she
received her sixteenth in a ceremony on 28 April 2022
In 2009,
Adichie married Ivara Esege, a Nigerian doctor. They have one daughter, who was
born in 2016.
Adichie
divides her time between the United States and Nigeria, where she teaches
writing workshops
In 2002,
she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing for
her short story "You in America", and her story "That
Harmattan Morning" was selected as a joint winner of the 2002 BBC World Service Short Story Awards. In 2003, she won the David T. Wong
International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award).
In 2010
she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker's "20
Under 40" Fiction Issue. In April 2014, she was named as one of 39 writers
aged under 40 in the Hay Festival and
Rainbow Book Club project Africa39,
celebrating Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014. In April 2017, it was announced that
Adichie had been elected into the 237th class of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of
the highest honours for intellectuals in the United States, as one of 228 new
members to be inducted on 7 October 2017.
Adichie
holds sixteen honorary doctorate degrees from some of the world’s best
universities including Yale University,
the University of
Pennsylvania, the University of
Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown
University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Catholic
University of Louvain.[27] In
2016, she was conferred an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane letters, honoris
causa, by Johns Hopkins
University. In 2017, she was conferred
honorary degrees, Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, by Haverford College and The
University of Edinburgh. In 2018, she
received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Amherst College. She
received an honorary degree, doctor honoris causa, from the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland, in
2019. On 20 May 2019, Ngozi Adichie received an honorary degree from Yale University.
On 28 April 2022, she received her sixteenth honorary doctorate degree from
the Catholic
University of Louvain.
On 13 October 2022, a member of Adichie ’s communications
team confirmed to Nigerian Newspaper, The Guardian, that she rejected a national awards to be conffered on her
by President Muhammadu Buhari. "“The author did not accept the award and,
as such, did not attend the ceremony
